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While this was slightly below analyst expectations of just over $53 billion, the company's profits were much higher than anticipated, at $2.5 billion (£1.9bn), up from $197 million (£150m) this time last year.

It was expected Amazon would report net income of around $1.2 billion.

In his statement on the results, Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos chose to focus on the success of the company's virtual assistant, Alexa.

The artificial intelligence-powered assistant started life as the heart of Amazon's Echo line of smart speakers, but is now becoming increasingly integrated into other devices.

"We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are," Mr Bezos said.

"There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year.

"Our partners are creating a wide variety of new Alexa-enabled devices and experiences, including soundbars from Polk and Sonos, headphones from Jabra, smart home devices from ecobee and First Alert, Windows 10 PCs from Acer, HP, and Lenovo, and cars from automakers including BMW, Ford, and Toyota."

Elsewhere in the results, Amazon's cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) also reported growth on the same period last year as it remains a crucial part of the firm's business.